Legendary rapper Guru died today, ending a short and private battle with cancer. Beyond the cultural significance of a hip hop artist dying of something other than a gunshot wound, the rap world lost a name that gets bandied about in “greatest emcee of all time” conversations as much as any. While even his biggest supporters tend to concede that the man has spit some fairly shoddy rhymes during his day, Guru’s tenor and flow is so perfect that criticizing his lyrics became like complaining about a lack of color in a black and white photograph.
To commemorate a carrier that pushed hip hop at exactly the time it needed it, the following is a quick mix of some of Guru’s best moments which, in turn, are some of the best in hip hop history.
Electric Adolescence – Guru Tribute Mix(right click to download) 30 mins/ 320 kbps/ 68.6MB
Erratic drum programming and deep electro synths create a mood as threatening and sleazy as the moment between when you realize that someone put something in your drink and when you loose consciousness.
While I generally agree with the conventional wisdom that jazz died at the end of the sixties, what was put to rest was the innovation, as if having so many masters deconstruct the music so extensively left their predecessors with no place to go. Which doesn’t mean there isn’t still great music being made, it’s just that the lack of discovery renders current artists as sort tribute acts to pioneers like Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane. There are, of course, those who have tried splicing jazz with modern production techniques, but to mostly disastrous results, with even the best of them sounding dated only moments after the records were pressed.
Ironically, the great American art-form has all but left its country of origin for distinctly un-American places like France and Eastern Europe. Poland’s Thomas Stanko is a worthy example of an artist who, while uninclined to reinvent the formula, produces music as worthwhile as those that paved his way. Pairing himself with a trio of younger up-and-coming musicians for his sublime 2002 release, Soul of Things, the seasoned composer presents thirteen versions of a singular theme, explaining that his entire career has ultimately involved his deconstructing a single song over and over again.
Considering the range of producers with substandard voices who perform their own vocals in favor of finding people who can actually, you know, sing, it seems surprising that Matthew Herbert waited fifteen years into his career before taking the mic, especially considering he can actually, you know, sing.
This remix of his new single strips down the already muted sound of the original, which on it’s own sounds like Hot Chip for grown-ups.
Matthew Herbert – Liepzig (JJTOP Remix)(right click to download) 4:25 mins/ 320 kbps/ 10.1MB
With the album released today, the first installment to a city-themed trilogy, here’s another track from another city, Manchester.
Matthew Herbert – Manchester(right click to download) 4:05 mins/ 320 kbps/ 9.37MB
Presenting a refreshing interpretation of the concept of a political party, this “unknown rapper” offers a lighthearted take on the 1980 Presidential Election between incumbent President Jimmy Carter and his Republican challenger, former Governor and b-movie actor, Ronald Regan. This is exactly the sort of rap record Thomas Jefferson would have liked, if he weren’t so incredibly racist.
The Unknown Rapper – Election 80 Rapp(right click to download) 6:59 mins/ 320 kbps/ 15.9MB
A couple of years into Reagan’s presidency, electro outfit Project Future released this pessimistic, if not funky, assessment of Regan’s trickle-down economic philosophy, lazily dubbed by the media as “Reaganomics”.
One of the greatest achievements of the makers of Sesame Street was the ability to present such a saccharin face to the public despite the depravity that existed behind the scenes. From the lurid homosexual relationship between Bert and Ernie to Oscar the Grouch’s racial tirades towards the show’s black cast members, what bubbled beneath this wholesome façade was a cauldron of jealously, violence, and of dangerous self indulgence.
The centrifuge of this sordid underbelly might have been the bitter rivalry that existed between Grover and Kermit the Frog, which dated back the show’s conception when The Children’s Television Workshop brought Kermit aboard to replace Grover as host, citing the blue monster’s refusal to use contractions when speaking as cause. This tension was not invisible on screen, most notably in Grover’s habit of running up to Kermit and saying “Hey, froggy babeee!” and then knocking him over with a hard slap on the back.
This rivalry extended from the small screen to the music scene when Kermit, having grown in prominence with his drug-addled late-night project, “The Muppet Show”, used his influence with the label to block the release Grover’s 1974 album “Grover Sings the Blues”, and then borrowed the spirit behind the melancholy racial epitaph for his own single, “It’s Not Easy Being Green”, which gained a greater notoriety, all but drowning out his colleague’s stymied release.
With enough time having passed, it has become a consensus opinion among critics and pop culture historians that the rivalry between these felt-clad pioneers ultimately resulted in an excelled creatively, mired as much in a reluctant mutual respect as it was in substance abuse and venereal disease. With overdue reverence to this fractious relationship, here is Grover’s underappreciated single, and Kermit’s appropriately appreciated response record.
Grover – I Am Blue(right click to download) 1:58 mins/ 320 kbps/ 4.53MB
I’d be just as curious to find out more about the origins of April Fools Day as I would to learn who decided it would be the only holiday to end midday. Perhaps someone realized how uncomfortable it would be to go to sleep on a night with those around you given license to fuck around; it actually wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the decision to cut the day short was made around the same time they discovered that putting a persons hand in hot water could make them wet the bed.
I’d personally be fine loosing the day altogether. Practical jokes have always made me uneasy, if only due to my general fear of anticipation: I’m the sort of guy that would rather just get punched in the face than have someone tell me they were going to punch me in the face at some indiscriminate time in the future. Or maybe my feelings stem from a practical joke played on me when I was twelve. I mean, at that age I probably should’ve known that Prince wasn’t going to sing at my birthday party, but that logic didn’t help dry the tears from my Purple Rain tour shirt.
No, I prefer a properly structured joke or well timed one liner. It doesn’t have to be fancy, something like “a skeleton walks into a bar and orders a beer and a mop” suits me fine. So, for this April Fools Day I thought I’d bypass the passive aggressive practical joke ritual and offer up a mix of proper comedy, from standup to sketches to amusing songs, all much wittier than the cling wrap on the toilet gag, and without the unsightly mess.
Rodney Dangerfield – No Respect Intro Steve Martin – Hostages Woody Allen – The Lost Generation Richard Pryor – Wino Charlie Murphy – Tsunami Eddie Murphy – Singers South Park – Colfax Point Chris Rock – No Sex Flight of the Concords – Think About It Chris Rock – Roger & Zapp That Mitchell & Webb Sound – Relaxed DJ 7 On the Hour – Intro, News On the Hour – TAB FM Audio Pullout On the Hour – Sports Desk with Alan Partridge The Day Today – September 11th On the Hour – Sports Desk with Alan Partridge The Armando Iannucci Show – Interview with Steven Spielberg Blue Jam – Ambivalent Parents That Mitchell and Webb Sound – The Boy Who Cried Wolf Leicester Comedy Festival Frankie Boyle – Various Demetri Martin – Sitting Guitar Steven Wright – Kitten Song Steven Wright – Various Woody Allen – Down South Monty Python – The Galaxy Song Bill Hicks – Sleep and the Message Rodney Dangerfield – Song of No Respect Flight of the Concords feat Rhys Darby – Leggy Blonde
Released by Trevor Jackson’s Output Recordings in 1999, this raucous piece of punk pop comes from a highly overlooked EP that might have become something of a cult classic if it weren’t at least a couple of years ahead of it’s time, instead forging a music territory that would later be settled by bands like The Rapture.
As their contribution to Smiling Pets, an unusually interesting Beach Boys tribute album released by Sony Japan in 1998, girl group Feelds provides what is intended to be a faithful rendering of one of Brian Wilson’s most enduring compositions. While it might be considered a form of sacrilege to describe it as surpassing the original, something about hearing the Japanese accent repeating, “sometimes I feel very sad” just kills me.
For the opening salvo of his upcoming LCD full length, James Murphy sticks with his tradition of preempting the album with a deliberate hipster party anthem, also following the progression of moving away from more conspicuous production and towards instrumentation.
If you’d like to hear the song, you can stream or download from the link below. Failing that, I expect you can just spend ten minutes in an American Apparel shop this weekend, and I’m sure it will grace the store’s speakers.
Centuries ago, a British curator travelled deep into Southeast Asia on a quest to find the artisan responsible for an exquisitely crafted statue of an Elephant, carved from a single piece of wood with what the man assessed as a preternatural level of skill. After months of trekking the unforgiving continent, he eventually met a slight and humble Indonesian woodworker living in poverty, though not in discontent.
Sharing a pot of tea inside a ramshackle workshop, the curator was awestruck to learn that such primitive tools were responsible for bearing such majestic artifacts. Eagerly, he pressed the craftsman to explain the nuances of his technique. Taking a wear-worn chisel in his hand, the craftsman replied, “I start with a block of wood and then I chip away the bits that don’t look like an elephant”.
Le Loup – Outside of This Car, The End of the World Whitey – Can’t Go Out Can’t Stay In Benoit & Sergio – What I’ve Lost Felix Da Housecat – He Was King No Regular Play – Owe Me The Armaberokay – The Hype (Marc Schneider and Ralf Schmidt Remix) Wolf – Papa Was a Rolling Stone Unknown Artist – Maximal Michael Ytre Rymden Dansskola – Bange Aneiser Laurent Garnier – It’s Just Muzik Birds and Souls – Birds and Souls Giorgos Gatzigristos – Sporting Dark Stuff Mr. C – Full Moon Minilogue – Giant Hairy Super Monster International Pony –The Royal Pennekaums Nicolas Jaar – Time For Us Trusme – War Ark – Back to Sleep Back Paul Simon – Can’t Run But (Jerome Covington Remix) Inch Time – Crystal Visions The One – Double Life International Pony – Goodbye
Electric Adolescence – Elephant Carving(right click to download) 60:00 mins/ 320 kbps/ 137MB
With few things in this life less obvious than a love song, you have to give credit to the writer who brings something new to a subject exploited more frequently than a woman with father issues. After all, there is such a fine line between a song that stirs your soul to one that makes you feel the way a male model might about his first week in prison.
Striding the right side of that line is the often inspiring Smog, most of whose fantasies involve making someone else cum. This sort of line might come across as crass at closing time at the bar, but our man convinces of his need to simply be of use: like a spindle, like a candle, like horseshoe, or like a corkscrew.
Smog – To Be of Use(right click to download) 5:41 mins/ 160 kbps/ 6.52MB
I know that many people search music blogs as a way to help make themselves more hip, so I thought I’d cut to the chase and post an all out instructional tape on the subject. Recorded by Del Close and John Brent for Mercury Records in 1959, this tongue-in-cheek record was no doubt taken seriously by more than a few wannabe hipsters.
Still, as it never hurts to brush up on the fundamentals, here’s an edited copy of the album for stream or download. Don’t be a drag, baby. Dig it!
Del Close and John Brent – How to Speak Hip(right click to download) 20:00 mins/ 256 kbps/ 36.62MB
While arguably the greatest soul artist of his generation in his own right, D’Angelo has never hidden his desire to follow in Prince’s footsteps. His debut album Brown Sugar was made in the model of the Minneapolis Genius, complete with the trademark ‘written, produced, arranged, composed, and performed by’ credit. Taking a long five years to release his follow-up, Voodoo, D’Angelo transformed his live show from his low-key man-at-the-piano setup to a large stage show modeled after Prince’s seminal Sign O’ the Times tour, and the result was as strong a concert as I’ve ever witnessed, and one I followed across two states to take in twice.
Even being as big a Prince fan as Christians are of Jesus, I admit that D’Angelo clears the bar Prince set in all but one very important way: his debut was fifteen years ago, and his only follow-up was released when the Twin Towers were still standing. When Prince was at the same point in his career he had 17 albums released and a rumored thousand more songs in his infamous vault. Add to that 3 feature films and two theatrically released concert films, and one is reminded of a comment Woody Allen once made: “It’s not the quantity of your sexual relations that counts, it’s the quality. On the other hand if the quantity drops below once every eight months, I would definitely look into it”.
That said, with rumors of an impending double album including a collaboration with Prince himself, D’Angelo is parlaying his lack of output into the sort of hype that preempts a Terrance Malick film or a lunar eclipse, and with the darkly themed “1,000 Deaths” recently leaked, it becomes easy to assume that the album will take some interesting directions and even be worth the long, if not frustrating, wait.
I am 11 and half years old and live in Jawbone, Kentucky.A creek runs behind our house where I live with my mother. She met you once some years ago. You are probably my one of, if not the, favorite person I’ve ever studied.I plan to be either:
A – an oceanographer
B – an architect, or
C – a pilot.
Thank you very much for your good work.
Sincerely, Ned Plimpton,
Blue Star Cadet, Zissou Society.
P.S. Do you ever wish you could breathe underwater?
Bobby Conn applies a Jackson 5 inspired rhythm and string section to this cautionary tale about the compromises one must endure along the road to success. That said, his assertion that you’re never going to get ahead by giving head to the man is probably more morally than factually sound.
Bobby Conn – Never Gonna Get Ahead(right click to download) 3:42 mins/ 160 kbps/ 4.25MB
Hailing from St. Pauls, Minneapolis, the birthplace of Prince, production duo No Regular Play makes no attempt to hide their affinity for Uptown’s favorite son. With altered vocals and a washed out backing track, Wolf and Lamb labelmate Nicolas Jaar provides a dense and dramatic remix that makes no attempt to compete with the original.
While a decision was made upon this blog’s inception to stick strictly to music and not splinter off into weightier topics like philosophy or politics, I seek a reprieve this Valentines Day with an issue that encompasses a bit of both. I’m writing, of course, about how people don’t slow dance at clubs anymore. Like the unfortunate phasing out of bench seats in automobiles or dueling to settle a grievance, our generation forgoing the slow dance strikes me less like a cultural evolution as it does a misguided regression by a society that has lost its way.
It might sound fantastical to readers born post Purple Rain, but it wasn’t so long ago that a DJ would pitch things down and play a ballad at peak hour, and why not? It’s well recognized, if not largely unspoken, that an establishment can charge eight dollars for an ounce of down-market alcohol in exchange for creating an opportunity for semi-consensual human contact. So why have we forsaken an imbedded social custom whereby a simple change in music would speed this process along?
Perhaps it’s a cultural shift from those of us raised in an era where sexuality was presented bathed in blue light and accompanied by a saxophone solo on scrambled pay per view, to a generation whose visual representation of sex comes by way of sallow pornography made on the brutally honest medium of digital video. For all of the drawbacks of prudishness, maybe having a bit of shame about sex forces one to be more seductive when asking for it. Or maybe we’re just living through the blowback from rave culture and the libido crushing stimulants that traded the ritual of a slow dance for a 90 minute shoulder rub in the “chill-out room” like members of a benign, sexless cult.
Whatever the reason, I’d like to take this day of romance to offer a plea to those responsible to drop a few ballads at the club so we can all get a bit of touch. The following is a slow dance starter kit, a selection which also makes for a compelling Valentines Day mix whether you’re celebrating with a long time partner, courting someone new, or are at home alone, cutting yourself to recapture an ex-lover’s fancy.
Winter Family – Garden Soko – I Will Never Love You More The Velvet Underground – Some Kinda Love (Closet Mix) Tommy James & the Shondells – Crimson & Clover Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg – Je t’aime moi non plus Beach Boys – Disney Girls Hall & Oates – I’m Just A Kid (Don’t Make Me Feel Like A Man) Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – The Way James Carr – What Can I Call My Own Natural Four – Can This Be Real? Otis Redding – I’ve Been Loving You Too Long BloodStone – Natural High Johnny Daye – Stay Baby Stay The Flamingos – I Only Have Eyes for You Duke Ellington and John Coltrane – In a Sentimental Mood Chet Baker – My Funny Valentine Os Mutantes – Baby shelly duvall – He Needs Me Steve Martin & Bernadette Peters – Tonight You Belong to Me Leo Sayer – When I Need You Prince – International Lover D’Angelo - Feel Like Makin’ Love Rufus featuring Chaka Khan – Sweet Thing Shirley Murdock – As We Lay
Electric Adolescence – Bring Back the Slow Dance(right click to download) 80:00 mins/ 256 kbps/ 146MB
Forged with sense of grandeur normally reserved for period musicals and aging actresses, this obscure Balearic offering from Escape From New York is as astounding as it as impossible to classify; combining elements of new wave, disco and several other subgenres yet to be invented in 1984. With the original release near impossible to find, the reissue is only slightly less illusive as a white label pressing limited to 300 copies.
A tip of the hat goes to Konrad Black, who introduced me to the song, proving why he remains to Berlin’s techno scene what egg is to French toast.
Escape From New York – Fire In My Heart(right click to download) 5:14 mins/ 192 kbps/ 7.19MB
